


Mawwaige

by Raikishi



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raikishi/pseuds/Raikishi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mawwaige is what brought them here</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mawwaige

**Author's Note:**

> Written for trope bingo: marriage  
> NOT a wedding fic  
> Didn't write a wedding fic; this is essentially how I imagine their marriage would work

    “That’s a dog.”

    “Puppy,” Steve corrects in what Tony likes to call his “wife voice.”

    “Why is there a dog?” Tony asks, crossing his arms and grimaces when Steve’s face twisted into that look. That “Hello, I’m Captain America and I’m better than you.” It was characterized by the set to Steve’s jaw and a narrowing in his eyes that would have made anyone else look like they had fallen backwards down the evolutionary tree. On Steve, it was intimidating as hell but five years of marriage had a tendency wear the edges down and now, it just made Tony want to lick him, see how many licks it would take to wipe the look off.

    Not today though because the puppy barks in Steve’s arm, brown eyes bright beneath a thick pelt of fur. It crawls in Steve’s arms, narrowly avoiding the super soldier’s steadily more determined snatches until Steve caught it by the flank, tugging it close. 

    “Darling, we’ve talked about this,” Tony cuts in then, because he can see it on Steve’s face.

    That faint softening to his features that Tony knows all too well, can be seen in the gentle curl of the corner of his mouth and loosening in his jaw. It’s a tell Tony has long since become accustomed to, having been one of the few on the receiving end of it. He knows Steve’s becoming attached, knows that the moment he does the task of separating his husband from the puppy will no longer be possible. 

    “No we haven’t,” Steve’s reply shakes him from his thoughts with a start.

    The puppy’s settled now, nosing against Steve’s outstretched palm and licking curiously as it padded around the soldier’s lap. A smile breaks out across Steve’s face as he scratches the puppy behind the ears but Tony’s not fooled, knows Steve’s tracking him and keeping careful track of his reactions.

    “I distinctly recall a conversation,” Tony came back with, sorting through his memories with a frown.

    There was only with the smallest bit of disappointment as he shuffled through them, everything falling neatly into place in a way that hadn’t been possible seven years ago. Sobriety was a dreadful bore. 

    On the upside, it served to prove Steve wrong and that deserved a celebration in and of itself.

    “You asked and I said no.”

    Asking was a gracious choice of words. Steve didn’t ask often, still found it difficult to do anything but demand. 

    Tony had been ambushed the night he’d stumbled in from Tokyo, worn out and so desperate for a drink he’d nearly flushed two years of sobriety down the drain. He’d stumbled through his house, hands trembling as he removed his tie and Steve had been there, drawing him close and holding him until the tremors had stopped with a word, offering comfort in his entire presence instead. 

    Thinking back, though, Tony easily recalled that careful look in Steve’s eyes, the same one he wore prior to carrying out a mission. It’d vanished immediately when Tony had caught his husband’s eyes. But Steve had never been one to let things go, was never one to let a mission fail completely. At the very end of that episode Steve had hinting towards a child when Tony had showered and fully shaken off the mindset. He’d put a stop to that train of thought immediately and Steve had dropped it, pulling Tony into his lap and held him tight for the entirety of the night. 

    Two nights later, Steve made up the acquiescence, making his second move by dragging Tony out of the workshop with kisses and soft promises, luring him into the bedroom. Tony hadn’t missed that look in those blue eyes but he’d gone willingly enough and he distinctly recalled how it’d just been getting good before Steve was outright demanding a pet.

    “I think I made my point quite clearly,” Tony finished, unable to keep from sounding smug as he remembered and how Steve had been writhing, barely coherent beneath him yet still trying to force the topic further even at the height of it.

    “We had sex and you thought I would forget about it,” Steve came back with, the words sharp and Tony bristled, hackles rising as a blank space settled between them.

    Steve had started it. It was hardly his fault Mr. Tactics had lost out and Tony waited his husband out, the silence turning tense. These moments were always the worst in his opinion, an uneasy balance that wavered towards a fight. 

    They didn’t often move beyond bickering but fights did happen; it was impossible to avoid one given the five years of marriage but Tony faced each one with no small amount of trepidation. He drummed his fingers against the counter, wishing for a glass to roll between his fingers as his throat clicked, a familiar thirst that never quite goes away crackling through.

    Steve turns to face him, face blank and careful as Tony is sure his is and after a moment, Steve relents slightly.

    “I was going to ask you,” Steve says quietly, trying for placating. There’s the faintest air of an apology there and Tony slowly releases a breath of relief at that, “But I found him outside and I couldn’t just leave him there.”

    Steve’s expression softened as he looked down at the puppy rising on his hind paws to lick at Steve’s face. Tony silently made a note never to let Steve kiss him again – at least at until the soldier scrubbed his face a thousand times over because losing on Captain America’s sharply determined and shockingly enthusiastic kisses was surely a crime. 

    He held out for a moment longer before sighing. 

    “Darling, do you remember what happened yesterday?”

    “Robots in Times Square,” comes the careful reply and the look Steve gives him is annoyed, confused, and growing unhappier by the moment as if Tony was stealing his last loaf of bread.  

    He probably was. Steve has always had a rigidly perfect image of his life: a wife, two and a half kids and a dog in a small house with a white picket fence. And Tony’s well of aware that a dog would be the least he could give his husband. But he’s well aware that Steve doesn’t need any more loss in his life.

    So he presses on.

    “And the week before?”

    “Aliens on Broadway,” Steve comes back with, face going carefully blank again.

    Absently, he scratches at the puppy’s belly. There’s a series of happy whines from the thing and Tony scowls, refusing to be moved by it. 

    “And the Tuesday before that?” he presses on instead.

    “Humanoids wandering around Soho,” there’s a quiet realization in Steve’s voice, making Tony twitch.

    “Do I really need more examples as to why this is a bad idea?” 

    Steve doesn’t quite smile at that, but it’s there and he rises from the floor, walking over to lean in as if to kiss his husband only to have the brunet pull back. The smile dimples the cornes of his mouth, a quiet private curl of his lips that has Tony squirming.  

    He’s a genius, he knows loss before it gets here.

    “You’re also forgetting the what happened before that,” Steve says, pulling back to grab a mug from the cupboard above the sink.

    Tony kept his mouth shut, frowning because knows exactly what Steve’s referring to. The three months before the craziness of this month had been an enormous lull of inactivity. Two months prior had been another five months of inactivity. Damn villains and their incompetence; it was a good thing he wasn’t one of them.

    The coffee machine beeps and Tony watches carefully as his husband moves around the kitchen. He wasn’t giving in– he wasn’t. Marriage was a equal partnership; it was Steve that had drilled the concept into his mind and he scowls at the back of Steve’s head, trying to channel the thought only to be distracted by the puppy nudging at his leg. It latches onto Tony’s leg with his front paws, standing up to bark cheerily at Tony. Without thinking he reaches down to scratch the top of his head. 

    “We’re not keeping him,” Tony tries one last time and the puppy whines at him as if understanding what he’d said. That was not guilt creeping up in his gut. He was not already thinking of names for the puppy.

    “Buddy. His name is Buddy,” Steve says, smile growing into that near-vicious victorious grin as he leaned close to hand Tony his coffee, a consolation prize, “Now give me my morning kiss, ‘darling’.”  
  



End file.
